Manitoba's unemployment rate edges up

WINNIPEG — Manitoba’s unemployment rate edged up a notch last month after the province’s economy posted a net loss of about 2,300 jobs, Statistics Canada said today.

The agency’s latest labour market survey showed that while the provincial economy added an estimated 4,000 new full-time jobs last month, it also shed about 6,200 part time ones.

It said there were an estimated 628,300 working in the province last month, versus 630,600 in May.

However, because an estimated 1,600 workers also dropped out of the labour force during the month, the number of unemployed Manitobans looking for work rose by only 600 to 34,500 from 33,900 in May.

That bumped up the provincial jobless rate to 5.2 per cent from 5.1 per cent in May.

Nationally, Canada’s unemployment rate inched down to 7.2 per cent as employers added 7,300 jobs overall. That number of new jobs usually isn’t enough to reduce the national unemployment rate — it had been 7.3 per cent in May — but June also saw a 16,600 drop in the number of active workers, which reduced the overall size of the labour force, Statistics Canada explained.

Regionally, there was an even split among provinces with employment increases as those with declines. But aside from Ontario — which added more than 20,000 jobs last month — the differences from the previous month were small in comparison to their populations, the agency said.

It was the second month in a row that Canada saw minimal job gains after two stunning months — March and April — when the economy added 140,000 jobs.

Still, given the size of the earlier increases, analysts said it is good news that the early gains were confirmed by May and June’s numbers, rather than reversed.

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